The Countdown is On for Seafood Week

UK - The countdown to Seafood Week (9 16 October) is now entering its final stages, with only nine days to go until celebrations officially begin.

A jam-packed week of festivities is planned to encourage consumers up and down the country to eat more seafood, more often. The national celebration seeks to highlight the abundance of delicious, fresh seafood on offer across the UK and aims to get the British public excited about experimenting with seafood at home and exploring new tastes when they visit their favourite restaurant or takeaway.

To highlight the versatility of this original superfood, each day will focus on a different type of seafood following the theme of Cook Me, Buy Me, Dine Me.

From the well-known species to the obscure, Seafood Week will demonstrate that if you’re prepared to have your tastebuds tickled, there’s an abundance of seafood to suit all different tastes, lifestyles and budgets.

Chef Owner of Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill in Piccadilly and Corrigan's Mayfair, Richard Corrigan has also given Seafood Week his backing, saying:

“It's great to see that we're becoming more and more interested in seafood and the variety we have throughout the year. Home cooks are more confident experimenting with various recipes in the kitchen and we need to encourage this enthusiasm.

“Seafood Week is a great initiative, we're an island with amazing produce and we should be making the most of our beautiful seafood. This campaign is warmly welcomed, I am proud to support it and encourage others to do the same.”

To kick the week off, on Friday 9 October, the Twitterverse will have its funny bone tickled as #fishpunday drops in the UK for the very first time.

Hosted by the winner of the best joke at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Darren Walsh, the day will challenge big brands, the media, the seafood industry and the Great British public to demonstrate their comedy credentials and share their favourite fish puns.

Offline, businesses are also gearing up to celebrate. Special Seafood Week stickers already adorn seafood products in some of the UK’s major supermarkets and a downloadable industry toolkit has been made available.

The free toolkit includes details of the official National Seafood Week themes, an assortment of printable marketing materials to help businesses promote their celebration of the week and a social media calendar to help them engage with customers online.

In addition, there is a chef recipe competition that challenges aspiring chefs and foodservice outlets up and down the country to design a dish that is both easy for consumers to replicate at home and which represents the aims of Seafood Week.

The competition closes on September 30 and the winner will receive a culinary trip for two to London and dedicated PR support from Seafish’s award winning media teams to promote their recipe and talents to the media.

For more information on Seafood Week, the Chef Recipe competition and to download the toolkit please visit: www.seafoodweek.co.uk